


because it brings me back to you

by blacksatinpointeshoes



Category: Logan (2017) - Fandom, X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Communication, Developing Relationship, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Falling In Love, Families of Choice, Female Character of Color, Fix-It of Sorts, Follows along with the plot of Logan (2017), Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mutant Powers, Mutants, Working it Out, this is just the tip of the iceberg
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-08 10:12:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13456089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacksatinpointeshoes/pseuds/blacksatinpointeshoes
Summary: After Westchester, Logan finds a friendship in an unexpected place: Doctor Minerva Halltomine, saved from the rest of the X-Men's fate by a well-timed vacation. For years, Logan and the good doctor entertain a rocky coexistence, jumping from place to place and smuggling medicine for Charles that could cost Minerva her medical license.Then they settle down in El Paso, and slowly their relationship wears down into a grating, painful nothingness.But when Laura Kinney arrives in the little hideaway on the Mexican side of the border, raining hell upon anyone who dares to cross her, the last mutants' sleepy little desert life will come to a very abrupt end. Minerva and Logan, after all this time, will be forced to brush the dust off of their clothes for one last fight.They're a far cry from perfect, but maybe they'll find each other in the process.





	1. I - prologue

**Author's Note:**

> this is an idea that hit me like a bus and I just had to run with it. I hope you enjoy reading Minerva just as much as I've loved making her up. enjoy :)

I - prologue

It’s been a while.

In some ways, Minerva had become used to the monotony. The heavy air that coated their little hideaway had settled into her hair and dust had slipped between her pores. It was always the same. Work in the city. Ride home with Logan. Fight with Logan. Rant to Caliban. Wait for Logan to apologise, like he always does. Pretend like the meds that she’s been stealing from the hospital are still enough. Know that they aren’t. Know that they’re all running out of time and ignoring the signs anyway.

And then Laura. Laura was different. Laura made their lives something again. Minerva had been so eager to jump into that car and ride away, from one border to another. Logan accused her of just needing a purpose again, but his words were so tired Minnie couldn’t help but wonder if he wanted a purpose, too.

She’s aging. Almost 50 now. She’s a far cry from the twenty-one-year-old, brand-new teacher that Logan met at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters so long ago. She still looks good, but there’s a maturity in her dark eyes. Doctor Minerva Halltomine is getting older.

They weren’t friends for so long, anyway, until after Westchester. It was just a fluke that Minnie wasn’t at the school when it happened. She met Logan in a coffee shop afterwards, all sun-tanned from her vacation. They sat there for a long time, the last two X-Men and their grief, and pretended that everything was okay.

Then they moved. Minerva found a job at a hospital and treated Charles under a fake name for as long as she could. They were found out – of course they were. Somebody wanted Charles’s brain for something. Minerva and Logan weren’t perfect, but they were the kindest caretakers Charles Xavier would receive for the rest of his life.

So they fled to El Paso. Another hospital, another fresh start. Minerva started stealing, passing it off in miniscule amounts and waiting until they had enough for a dose. She was careful. She got good. She could lose her license for this and by then, who knew what would become of them?

Caliban came to live with them in that little house right across the border. Logan started driving – at first he drove Minnie to and from work in that fancy Chrysler 24, and taxi’d around the rest of the city during the day. Then the more profitable rides came in at night so Minnie bought her own car, and they pretended like nothing was wrong. Like Logan wasn’t coming home later and later with scrapes and bullet wounds and whiskey on his breath. They don’t talk about it.

They stopped talking about anything, really.

Caliban is a provocateur. In some ways Minnie appreciates it. He doesn’t let Logan get away with shit like she does, but she’s always had a soft spot for that gruff old mutant anyway. Caliban is bitter and smart and Minerva can’t help but like him. Sometimes, when she and Caliban sit down for a cup of tea, Minerva sees Logan watching from the doorway until he catches her eye. Then he leaves. They don’t talk about that either.

Really the only time they speak is at night. They aren’t together but they’re not… _not_ together either. A while ago, Logan’s nightmares got worse so he practically threw her out of the room, growling at her, waiting after the door slammed to see if Minerva would come back. She didn’t come back. Logan doesn’t really sleep anymore.

But she knows how to deal with that part of him better than anyone. She’s been doing it since Westchester like an instinct. Because Minerva is a mindwalker, a blink-and-you’ll miss it influence that feels so good when she’s in your head. Like you want to be doing what she wants to do. It’s calming. Logan can’t help but trust her, and he hates it.

But even still as their daytime interactions are strained, Minerva knows him. She knows his moods and his insomnia. She is there when he needs her most. And he can’t stand to rely on her.

That’s where they are now. So yeah. It’s been a while.


	2. II - part one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another short chapter, though they will begin to lengthen after this. :)

II – part one

 

Minerva sits in the front seat of the now-beat up Chrysler as they ride, avoiding Logan’s gaze. Charles is sitting behind her and Laura sits behind Logan. The four of them look like a family. But none of them speak. There is ice that can be broken so easily but none of them are willing to pick up the axe.

It’s been a while. It’s the same thing she thought the moment she slammed the car door and yelled for Logan to “just drive, dammit!” It’s been a while since they’ve had an adventure like this. It’s been a while since tensions have run this high. It’s been a while since Minerva has been around a child.

They’re coasting through the open road. Logan’s hand tightens on the wheel, fists clenching. She catches the motion, angles her face to watch him. Logan’s whole body is tense. Minerva waits.

“St’p it,” he grunts in her direction, the words coming up with a few hoarse coughs rattling through his body. She can hear the ache in his chest. Minerva just keeps watching him for another few moments. She pretends it’s because she is enigmatic and mysterious. Really there is just a lump in her throat and she doesn’t know what to say.

_“Stop_ ‘t –” Logan tries again, but the words are stolen from his mouth by a coughing fit longer than the last, shoulders shaking. The noise is ragged and almost whistling, desperate, the first only prompting the need for the second and so on. The sound that ends it is half groan and half whimper.

“You sound like shit,” says Minerva evenly, reaching out across the space between them to touch Logan’s wrist. He bats her away and the car swerves, prompting Laura to snap out of her sleepy lull in the backseat.

“I’m fine.” They both know he’s lying.

“Sure.”

Minerva settles back down into her seat and shuts her eyes and suddenly Logan needs to keep her talking. It’s been too long since they’ve spoken, _really_ spoken, the way they used to. It’s like talking to a stranger now.

“Min –”

There is a long silence.

“So it’s ‘Min’ again, is it?” she asks. Her Southern accent is liquid and smooth. From the backseat, Charles chuckles. Logan sends him a dirty look and Minerva’s hand steadies the wheel. “Eyes on the road, bud.”

“Fuck you.”

“It’s been a while.”

Logan makes a noise in the back of his throat and shifts his hands on the wheel. “We have a long way to go,” he says, voice straining. “And we need a new –”

Minerva’s hand finds his shoulder, massaging circles into the taut muscle almost subconsciously as Logan leans forward, heaving with coughs more urgent than before. “Car,” she finishes as he wipes at his watering eyes. “We need a new car.”

Logan clears his throat again. “Yes.”

_“You_ need rest, Logan,” Minerva murmurs, just loud enough to be audible across the front seat. “You can’t keep up like this.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says, voice gruff as ever. His eyes are trained on the road and Minerva knows he’s lying.

“When was the last time you slept?” she asks, quiet and deliberately provocative. Logan’s hands clench on the wheel.

“Drop it.”

“When was the last time –”

“I fucking said drop it, Minerva!” But he can feel her eyes on his skin. They prickle like the tips of a barbed wire fence pressing into his chest. “I don’t remember.”

“Logan.”

“I said I don’t fucking remember, okay? It’s –” The sentence cracks into rising coughs. They sound bad, painful and popping like gunshots. Minerva sees him wince, his hands tremble. She stays silent.

Logan sighs, heavy and tired. “I don’t remember.”

“Your cough hasn’t gotten any better either.” She changes subjects like a car switching lanes.

“What, are you going to grill me about every single fucking thing that’s gone wrong lately?” he growls in return. “It’s worse because of the dust. That’s all.”

“Sure.”

Logan’s chest shakes and he raises an arm to cough into his elbow again. “I know what’s going on, Min.”

“Then let me treat you,” she says, and their argument is an old one. “I’m a doctor. It’s what I do.”

“Christ, Minerva –”

“At least let me drive,” she implores him, and there is a warmth in his body that Logan knows is the tell-tale sign of her mindwalking. She is stirring up his head. He doesn’t want to resist.

He pulls over and the two of them switch sides. Logan falls asleep in the passenger seat the moment they hit the road.

The truth is that as much as Logan will try to pull away, Minerva will come back. Because the same way he pulls away from people, she is determined to take care of those who don’t want or need her help. It gives her purpose. It helps her cope.

_They match like that_ , he supposes before the black sheet of sleep swallows him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are always dearly appreciated! come visit me on my tumblr, thoughtsbubble, or Minerva's tumblr, mindwalkers. :)


	3. III, IV

III – part two

 

Logan’s claws are embedded in the dashboard. The car screeches to a halt and he jerks forward out of his tentative rest, the sound of tires echoing like screams. It’s instinct. The car can’t get much more ruined than it already is, anyway.

Slowly, Logan comes around to see Minerva watching him from behind the wheel. “Wh’re are we?” he asks, voice sticky from sleep. A few coughs trail behind, his shoulders shaking. Logan clears his throat and pulls his claws out of the car, sheathing them with a delicate care. The splitting of skin on his knuckles burns and Logan bites back a hiss of discomfort. Minerva just keeps watching him.

“Hotel,” she says eventually, nodding outside. “Harrah’s New Orleans Casino.” His response is a dull glare and Minerva shrugs. “We weren’t going to last much longer, gas wise.”

Logan pushes himself up to a proper sitting position and tries to rub the ache out of his shoulders. “And so we –” He is rudely interrupted by stinging coughs. “We ended up –” The rattle in his chest builds on top of the words. “We –”

“Yes,” says Minerva after it becomes clear Logan is coughing too hard to speak properly. “We ended up here. They have valet parking.”

His eyes are watery and red. “You wanna put in a good –” His voice breaks, but through sheer force, Logan tamps down the coughs that threaten him again. “Put in a good word for us?”

For a moment Minerva smiles. She looks younger again with that smile. “Sure,” she says. “I can do that.”

They’ve stopped the car in front of the Casino and Logan is more than happy to get out, noting with forlorn despondence that the vehicle is far beyond salvation. With typical gruff charm he coerces Laura and Charles out of the car while Minnie stays behind the wheel in preparation.

“Putting a good word in” is Minerva’s slang for mindwalking. Through that gentle lull of her Southern accent and a finely honed set of mutant powers, she can slip thoughts into a person’s mind: suggest, say, people who would remain best unrevealed, cars to forget once they have been put in the parking lot. Those who have been marked by Minerva’s mental footprints are easier to influence the second time. The hotel room they stay in tonight will also most likely be free.

Minnie pulls up the car to a young kid with a bad haircut, still in the phase of his life where acne exists. “Hey, darlin’,” she coos, laying it on thick as she searches for his very human, completely unguarded mind.

“Ma’am, this is a valet service,” says the boy, but Minnie has already latched onto that consciousness of his and plugged herself in like a parasite.

“I know!” she chirps, flashing a megawatt smile. “I was just thinkin’ you’d like to stay and talk to me for a while. There might even be a special spot where you can put the car, so we can find it in the morning.” She draws him in closer and the boy’s expression momentarily smooths into blankness.

“Sure,” he says after a moment. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

A contradictory thrill runs through Minerva: the guilt of manipulating a child like this, and the part of her that delights in it. Diplomacy, after all, has always been her greatest weapon. She can convince a person to do whatever she likes without even lifting a finger. If she had Charles’s reach, she could rule the world.

“I’m glad,” Minerva trills, leaning out the window. “See, I also need a manager. Someone who deals with the prices for the rooms.”

“I can get that for you,” says the boy with a smile. By now he is completely enamoured with her. He is wrapped around her little finger and enjoying every second.

“Really?” she asks, widening those dark eyes. _“Good,_ sweetheart. That’s good. Be a dear and bring the manager out here, won’t you?”

The parking assistant almost trips over himself in an effort to serve her and Minerva slumps back into the car, her smile disappearing as quickly as it came. Her hands are shaking, and her palms are clammy. She’s not sure whether it’s from nerves or using her ability. All she knows is that it’s been a while since she’s done it properly, influencing herself that thoroughly on a person.

Maybe it’s age affecting her, the same way it’s affecting Logan.

The manager is a bit harder to win over, but Minerva does it with a smile and a wink. “I’d really appreciate it if we could stay here without a trace,” she says, like it’s a normal request. “Without a trace or a credit card bill.”

Holding onto both the boy and the manager is exhausting. For a moment her vision goes white but then she hears the “Okay,” and realises that the manager was so overwhelmed with her desire he couldn’t help but comply.

Minerva steps out of the car, props herself on the door. “Remember,” she says in a voice like a purr, “I was never here. You can’t even remember my name.”

The valet boy jumps into the Chrysler and drives to the parking lot. The manager comes to, dazed, but Minerva has already planted the ideas in his head and then disappeared into the crowd.

Logan has come back to look for her. When she spots him, it’s the first time she realises how absolutely shitty he looks. It’s the first time she realises how old he’s gotten. Seeing him in this far-off full-length shot is jarring.

He’s limping. His hair is grey around the roots and his beard is messy. He’s coughing even as he scans the mass of people for her face, and scars poke out from beneath the collar of his jacket. A pair of reading glasses hangs from his pocket. Minerva barely recognises Logan like this. He is a cobbled masterpiece of a million years; fatigue hangs in his eyes like clouds over the sun.

Minerva raises a still trembling hand. He catches sight of her and she starts towards him as he leans back against the wall.

_“You_ look like shit,” Logan says. His tone is half concern and half ‘gotcha.’

“You’re one to talk,” Minerva huffs, instantly pissed off at the greeting. “I did what you said. Put in a good word.”

“Hey,” says Logan, catching her arm as she tries to walk away. “That’s not what you look like after ‘putting in a good word.’”

Minerva shakes him off. “And what would you know?”

“Don’t give me that _bullshit,”_ the other mutant growls, lowering his voice. “That was two people, max. I’ve seen you hold twelve.”

She turns to face him, abrupt enough to force Logan to halt in his tracks. _“This_ is not what I look like after putting in a good word?” she asks, maybe unnecessarily angry. But he’s right, and she’s scared, and she’s taking it out on him. “That –” she points to the blood on his chest, “is not what _you_ look like after a fight.”

That seems to knock the wind out of him. Logan deflates for a moment and they both stand there, confronting the reality of it, the grey in their hair and the way their abilities aren’t quite up to snuff.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because he’s not sure what else there is _to_ say.

“No, you’re not.”

There is a short pause.

“No. I’m not.”

 

IV – part three

 

The sound of the movie permeates the tiny hotel room, Charles’s scratchy voice explaining its significance to Laura. He is more lucid than he has been in weeks. Minerva feels herself wanting to impose.

She doesn’t impose, because her thoughts are still overrun with the memory of her shaking hands after the mindwalking incident. The exertion hadn’t been as great as it had been in the past, and yet she was affected as if she were trying to hold back an army. There is a very simple cause that Minerva doesn’t want to consider.

It’s easy to ignore her own plight when she hears Logan coughing from the next room over. In a flash she replaces her worries with his. She doesn’t have to think about or deal with her own problems this way.

Minerva stands and makes her way around to the bathroom door, knocking to signal her presence. Logan is hunched over a towel, one hand propped on the sink. She can hear his voice in the ragged groans that propel the coughing forward, the one always more desperate than its predecessor. “Logan.”

With a gasp that sounds more like a growl, Logan turns. Every scar of his chest is on display, some of the fresh wounds still open. Minerva can’t even conceptualise how much that must hurt. “Get out, Min.”

She does the opposite, edging closer. If he’s using her nickname it must mean he’s not entirely closed off yet. “Are you alright?”

Logan responds by twisting back and raising the towel to his lips again, as if the fabric will protect her from the hoarse, chesty coughs that tear through his side like bullets. Minerva darts out a hand and pulls the towel taut when he’s finished, a dark red stain revealed to the open air. “That’s blood.”

“Congratulations, you passed basic chemistry,” Logan snaps, yanking the cloth back and stifling the coughing as he speaks.

“Logan –”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Minerva makes a hand gesture that could mean anything. “You didn’t tell me things were _this_ bad –”

“This is nowhere close to bad –”

“So it’s been worse?” Minerva is close to yelling, accent thickening from a light twang to a heavy roll of honey-coloured thunder. “It’s been worse and you didn’t tell me? Knowing I’m a _doctor,_ knowing I can _help you –”_

Logan ruins the atmosphere with a ragged chuckle. “I almost forgot how fucking Southern you get when you’re angry.” Minerva glares. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“If you would just talk to me I could think of somethin’, I swear –”

“I said there’s nothing you can _fucking do,_ Minerva!” Logan snarls, inhaling sharply as he is overcome with violent coughs. “I didn’t ask you to –” Every other word is punctuated with a throaty gasp. “I didn’t ask you to fucking analyse me –”

For what feels like hours, Logan’s coughing mounts with the intensity of an oncoming freight train. He sits down heavily on the edge of the bathtub, leaning forward with both hands covering his mouth as he is racked with painful, dry coughing.

Minerva goes to him. She opens her mouth as if to apologise but decides against it, eventually just massaging his shoulders the same way she did in the car. Logan’s breathing is uneven as the coughing disintegrates into little puffs of a low rumble in his chest. He reaches for one of the tiny bottles of liquor on the countertop.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Minerva asks, stunned that _this_ would be Logan’s next course of action after a coughing fit like the one he’s just suffered.

He stands and almost staggers, leaving her shocked on the edge of the tub. “Fuck off, moral piety,” he growls. “I can handle myself.”

“You know, I would believe that if you were making adult choices right now,” Minerva snaps in return, her anger coming back in full force after her temporary moment of sympathy. “But I’m not –”

“You have _no right,”_ Logan says, his voice rattling in his chest, “to –” he coughs again, short and defiant in the way he cuts it off, “-to judge me, Min. No _fucking_ right.” He downs the bottle and Minerva winces. “What’s it that they say about glass houses?”

“I’m trying to help,” she says stubbornly. “That’s all.”

“No,” says Logan with a tone that could almost be wisdom. “You’re trying to ignore that we’re _both_ fucked up by putting all the blame on me.”

Minerva is quiet for a moment. “Fuck you.”

Logan’s cocky smile belongs on his face years ago. “Maybe later.”

He clears his throat and, like an instinct, Minerva helps him slide into the button down sitting on the kitchen sink. They both know, as she buttons it in silence, that Logan is in far too much pain to properly put on a t-shirt, but neither of them say it.

They’ve spoken enough for one afternoon.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos and comments are always appreciated :)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments & kudos are always dearly appreciated. I am on tumblr as thoughtsbubble; minerva's tumblr is mindwalkers. feel free to yell at/with me :)


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